The University of Houston needs to boost its level of engagement in the Third Ward.

TDECU Stadium at the University of Houston seen in an aerial view on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2014, in Houston. ( Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle )
City: Houston
Location: South Side
GPS: N29(degrees)43.190' W95(degrees)20.879'

University of Houston students returning to campus this fall no doubt appreciate their vibrant, verdant campus, a sprawling oasis that's all the more striking because of its vivid contrast to adjoining Third Ward neighborhoods. The neighborhoods west of Cullen Boulevard are home to thousands of stalwart, hardworking Houstonians, as well as UH students, but they also harbor some of the city's most vexing problems - stubborn multi-generational poverty, substandard housing, high crime rates and troubled schools among them.

As the anchor institution for the area, UH could be so much more engaged with the community than it is. We are well aware that UH students, faculty and administrators tutor and volunteer in the Third Ward. We applaud their efforts, but the kind of institutional engagement we have in mind is much more ambitious than that. As urban universities around the country have discovered, the engagement invariably turns out to be mutually beneficial.

Examples abound of urban universities like UH working to break down barriers between campus and community, working to make their bountiful resources, intellectual and otherwise, available to their neighbors. Many have become important players in urban revitalization. They've built moderate-income housing, restored commercial areas, provided health care and established neighborhood schools.

University students, in turn, are able to take advantage of real-world engagement. They get their hands dirty handling knotty problems that residents deal with daily and that cities have grappled with for decades. The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, for example, is known as a pioneer in a years-long effort to tear down the walls dividing campus and community and placing its academic resources to work for the good of its host community. The Ivy League university in recent years has renovated housing, offered faculty members incentives to move into the surrounding neighborhood and invested millions to build a public school.

Like Penn, the University of Cincinnati recognized that its fate was closely tied to the health and well-being of the surrounding neighborhood and devised ambitious development strategies that extended beyond the campus. Working with the city of Cincinnati, the university helped redevelop an adjacent neighborhood struggling with poor housing stock, a deteriorating commercial zone and related social ills.

Clark University, surrounded by struggling neighborhoods in Worcester, Mass., helped to renovate hundreds of housing units, sold homes to first-time homeowners and co-founded and helps run an award-winning high school.

Writing in a publication called University Business Magazine a few years ago, Clark's president, John Bassett, noted that community engagement is not easy. "It cannot be a top-down, one-shot charitable endeavor," he wrote. "It has to be a real partnership with the community. ."

Despite the challenges, the sustainable partnership we envision between this city's superb Tier 1 institution and its neighbors, with the city itself a key player, has limitless potential. In our view, everybody benefits.